Phillip: I was there. His last words were to you.
Henry: He was a loving man and you've learned nothing from him.
Phillip: I've learned how much fathers live in sons.
-James Goldman, The Lion in Winter
It is a brisk and windy February day in the desert. Justin and I are in the park playing catch.
My football logic, or lack of it, turned out to be exactly opposite of what the game needed. I figured, "Six-year-old boy? Little hands, little football." Before Justin got here, I bought the smallest one I could find. Massive fail. Sailing through the air, he couldn't get his hands around it.
Fast-forward a month later and we tried a slightly bigger football. Still too hard to catch.
From month 3 onward, we use a full-size football and he catches it like a champ.
Nerf, thank goodness, because it still whacks him in the face two times out of ten, but still, it's a Big Boy ball, and he handles it with grace -- the kind I never had, but the kind I'm learning now.
I watch his steady display of growing dexterity and I beam with pride.
This feels right somehow, tossing a football back and forth with Justin, smiling at the good ones, laughing at the misfires, watching his arms stretch up and his feet leave the ground as he jumps to pull down a pass he has no earthly business catching, but he catches it anyway. He's in the air, his fingers stretch, and Hail Mary, it's his.
This boy will score the winning touchdown someday. Mark my words. As sure as we're standing here, this boy will win football games.
I think a lot about my own dad now, and how he never played catch with me, and what that's always meant in my life.
They've said so much about nature versus nurture, and what makes some little boys grow up to be strong, straight football stars, and what makes some grow up to be unathletic gay boys, the misfits of middle school, picked last for every team, befuddled and cringing in their own inhibited weakness, ashamed in every gym class, jealous of the boys who make it look so easy, but unable, uninterested and fearful of learning. There's no one at home to teach them.
But nobody's dad creates a gay son any more than any child "turns out" to be gay. It can't be taught or created by neglect or bad parenting. Being gay is inherent to who you are, like having blue eyes. You're either born that way or not, and whether your dad played catch with you in the backyard or dropped the ball entirely, you're just who you are.
It took me 46 years to learn to play catch. And if I'm not mistaken on this brisk February morning, it's taken me 46 years to forgive my dad for not teaching me. But I think I'm finally here. My heart spills over as my six-year-old son throws me a perfect, graceful spiral, and it feels like wonder. It feels like redemption.
I throw it back, my own skill surprising me. Justin reaches up for the football with arms and fingers still pudgy with baby fat, this marvel of a boy who still walks a bit with his toes pointed inward, who can't sit still in a chair and will sometimes fall off, and yet, he picks another pass out of the air with such little effort, I have to laugh. Actually laugh out loud at how simple he makes it.
And I feel like my dad is here with me...living, laughing, loving along with this, apologizing for years he didn't share this with me, when his life was too full of the Waupaca Foundry and his hands were too full of Seagram's V.O. to make holding a football possible. He wasn't bad for that, just a little bit lost in his own way, and it's taken him until now, nine years after his death and the rollicking addition of a grandson he'll never meet, to find his way back here to finally throw the football with me.
Tried so hard just to hold you near
Was as good as I could be
Even when I had you here
You stayed so far from me
Can't go back to make things right
I wish I understood
Time has made things clearer now
You did the best you could
- Bonnie Raitt, Circle Dance
The sun is coming out from behind the clouds. The day is getting warmer. Winter coats are getting too heavy for this running and throwing in the park. As fun as it is, as simple as we make it, this laughing zen of football between me and my son, it's time to go home.
Justin and I throw three more times back and forth just for good measure, then he tucks the football under his arm -- even that makes me smile, because it's bigger than his head -- and we trudge down the sidewalk, headed back to the house.
He punches my arm.
"That was fun," he grins.
"Really fun," I agree.
And we walk home smiling, and I hear my own dad whispering softly in my heart, "I love you guys."
We love you too, Dad. And thanks for playing catch with us.
We love you too.
